Oh sure, why not, a new slam...

It's been a while since I've written a slam and I figured it was time!
I churned this one out on my commute from Chicago to Boston today, but the idea of it has been brewing in my head for a few weeks.
Enjoy!
--

The sliding door to my 14^th floor balcony was cracked open
and the humidity of the evening air was heavy,
filling the room like invisible smoke breathing down my neck.

I could hear the restless Atlantic just a few hundred feet away
masked by the sound of a departing jet thundering into the black abyss above
and the occasional giddy laugh of a girl who has had
one too many vodka y jugo de chinas to drink.

As the clock passed midnight, the intoxicated laughter gave way
to waves brushing the sandy shores and sweeping away
remnants of sand castles that once stood tall in the spots
where only memories of towers and sand pales remain.

A text message vibrated on the pillow
telling me to meet him on the beach.
It was an easy decision to make because the sound of the water
under the deep night sky
brings me to a spiritual place
where I remember the crashing waves
along the southern coast of India and the faint smell of
sandalwood incense burning
as the evening prayers were chanted.

Laying on the beach there is nobody around and nothing to see
but the glow of the city reflecting off the ocean
and the crescent moon illuminating a cloud
we’ve likened to a greedy monster ready to attack.

He points to the figurative arm of the unnamed cloud alien
and I’m caught off guard when he lowers his hand onto mine
in a way that was coy but intentional
as if he needed to test the water before jumping in.

It should have been every bit exhilarating as romantic
but in retrospect it was neither.
It was the awkward exchange of two souls misunderstanding
what romance is and could be
for the comfort of companionship in a place
thousands of miles away from home.

And that was perfectly okay, too, because it was, after all,
late in the evening and we both had long days of work
waiting for us in just a few short hours.

Still yet, I wanted to kiss him.
Actually, I wanted him to kiss me.
Who doesn’t want to feel wanted?

The cloud monster passed,
offering a clearing in the night sky where
two or three shooting stars
reminded me that in this world I should never
feel small, but instead,

feel big because those stars
are where I came from and are
in every way
me.

I looked at my friend in the eyes and saw
the reflection of the sky in them
and as we locked our lips under the moonlight
I realized that in the right light
I could see the stars in anybody’s eyes
as long as I was standing at the right angle.

I knew then that home could be found in any one of us
so long as I was willing to keep the door open.

High Anxiety

When I set out to start writing this blog, I wanted to talk about my experience as a flight attendant.  I wanted to recant hilarious memories of questionable passenger behavior; the type that is hardly dangerous, but good for a belly laugh.  As I write this entry from seat 10A on a flight to Newark, my attention is divided between a passenger struggling to open the overhead bin a few rows ahead and the person directly in front of me ogling at the complicated mechanism that is the window shade.   It’s fascinating, isn’t it, that the window shade only moves in two directions (that’s up and down for those of you who are mechanically disadvantaged).  I’ve not flown much in the past few months (only a few flights) because I’ve been wrapped up in some other projects within the airline, so I don’t have many stories to share.  And then, when I witness the miracle of the man figuring out that the window shade will actually go all the way down, I realize the ultimate paradox of my job: I've missed it so much and yet not at all.

In lieu of telling tales about others, I shared a few slam poems I’d written and I wrote candidly about my experience with antidepressant withdrawal.  I thought nothing of it so I was quite surprised when e-mails and private messages started arriving to my Inbox that said it was “brave” and “ballsy” to openly discuss behavioral health conditions like depression and anxiety on the Internet.  Surely, one wouldn’t do that – such a topic is far too taboo to be discussed like it’s the common cold.

I wrote how beautiful it was to feel real, raw emotion and how that would, in some way, be my ticket to happiness in a life free from pills.  In a recent, unexpected twist of fate, I relapsed into my condition after less than a year without medication and quickly relearned that just because what you’re feeling is real, doesn’t mean it’s tolerable. I had forgotten how powerfully somatic anxiety and depression can be and the reminder came like a train blasting full steam ahead through the glass walls I’d built around myself to stay safe.

When an invisible devil has his hands gripped around your neck; when your body jolts awake at 2:00am in a cold sweat and feel like you can’t breathe; when the entire world constantly looks like it’s tilting to one side… you realize quickly that something is wrong.  When you wake up and instantly dread the day; when insomnia robs you of your dreams; when it feels like electricity is pulsing through your veins instead of blood; when an unending sea of nostalgic memories about what your life was like before your brain broke floods your conscious mind… you have no choice but to get over the stigma society has created for your condition and get help.  There is no other alternative if you believe that life is worth fighting for.  And life is always worth fighting for.

This is not a call for help or a cry for attention – it’s just an introduction to what will become a very honest x-ray look into what has become my emotional baggage.  I lucked out and got depression and anxiety in my genes, but at least my baggage is a match set.  If there is one thing I know for certain, it’s that living with a depressed and anxious mind can be the loneliest experience a person may ever know.  If this helps just one person to know they aren’t alone, then writing this down will have been worth every second spent.  And if this helps nobody, at least it will have been cathartic for me to take the words out of my head and plant them in permanent marker to a world that knows this condition is real, but just doesn’t want to talk about it.

Sorry, world, but I'm going to talk about it. 

An Ode to Cymbalta

Sometimes people come into your life and strike up a conversation with you that invokes memories you forgot the significance of.  The memory doesn’t ever leave you, but the importance of it gets lost in the greater scheme of your life.  Tonight, I was reminded by a new, but already dear friend Andrew, about the tipping point in my life when everything went belly-up for what has ultimately become the greater good. 

Some of you know me quite well and know what I went through after coming back from India.  Others may have an inkling.  Most probably have no idea.  And really, to be honest, it doesn’t matter... if you want the full story, you can ask.   Let’s get on with it.

So yes, I did study abroad in India and yes, it was a life changing experience in so many more ways than I could ever succinctly write here.  India was my coming of age in that it opened my eyes to spiritual growth that didn’t require religion along with it.  At the same time, India opened up a Pandora’s Box of emotions and instability that, at the time, I was ill-equipped to handle.  I’m better at it now, but still not perfect, nor will I ever be, no matter how many years or lifetimes I get to practice.   

By the grace of modern medicine and a semester’s break from college in 2009, I sorted myself out enough to function in society.   I’d be remiss to ignore those first few months home, though, because they were flanked with a lot of crying, a lot of not understanding the world and a never-ending cycle of antidepressants and other drug cocktails.  It’s amazing, in retrospect, how every medical specialist knows exactly what is wrong with you and exactly how to fix it.  Tee up about 10 prescription medications all at the same time and you’re either going to be medicated into tolerable ignorance or just plain bent out of shape.  For me, it was the latter, but I stayed on one drug (Cymbalta) because I knew it was the right thing for me to do in a time when I needed something stronger and bigger than myself. 

About a year ago I promised myself I’d get off medication, if for no other reason than to understand how I felt without any kind of chemical intervention, be it pharmaceuticals or vitamins.   I wasn’t as worried about the stigma of taking these types of pills – if I was, I’d never write this entry.   Roughly six months ago, the process of tapering off medication ended, and so did a reign of 4 years under the chemical veil.   I needed to do this for me.  Mostly because I wanted to see if the medication was really necessary and if it was, I wanted to understand exactly what it was doing for me.  I was nervous to experience withdrawal symptoms that are often equated with the worst kind of hell…  more nervous, though, to have to bear the thought of actually needing the pills and knowing that whatever triggered in India was going to result in a permanent lifestyle change. 

It’s only been six months without and I do feel different, but not necessarily worse. Just different.  I’m a little more anxious, a little more achey in my neck and shoulders.  I sleep more, which I didn’t know was possible seeing as how I sleep a lot as it is.  But in this rebirth comes the opportunity and the challenge to approach life and health from an even more holistic perspective.

I was reminded that the spiritual essence of what you learn in emotional strife stays with you no matter where you go and who you become.  I gained a tremendous amount from yoga and meditation, from understanding my body and its connection to my mind and to putting a concentrated effort into the importance of positive, healing energy.  Still, I am unsettled lately, largely because of the stress of my work, but in a smaller sense, I am getting my first exposure to the raw emotion that I relied on medication to hide. 

The theme for me going forward is to do better and be better.  This year, I promised that I would be a better friend and coworker.  I am grateful for the new opportunities my job has presented me with this year.  They are time consuming and, for lack of a better way to put it, taking over my life, and this is a path that I chose and accepted.  I do truly love what I do.  However, on the corporate path, my spiritual path has fallen by the wayside at the expense of some inner peace and quality time with friends and family.  In the quest to do better, I need to relearn balance and make it an active, real part of my life.  This will be my m.o. going forward.

So there you have it.  The happy-go-lucky, cynically sarcastic guy on the plane (and now in the office, too) has a story you didn’t expect.  The truth, however, is that the story is still being written.  If we really do choose our direction and attract things into our lives by the energy we exhale, then yes, the story is most definitely still being written.

I can give you a teaser into the next chapter though and it goes something like this…

He found balance in a semi-backwards way that somehow worked for him.  He was happy; happier than he'd been in a long time and happier that he didn't give up in the darker days of years past.  He still devoted an unreasonable amount of time to work, but invested much more time to be with his friends and family.  He challenged himself to make the most of the “up” days and to accept the “down” days with as much grace and poise as is humanly possible.  Above all else, he rested at night knowing that he was free from medication and this was valuable to him for one reason alone: whatever emotion he was feeling was real.  That, to him, was the truest indication of life and it was, in every sense of the word, beautiful.